Adobe Photoshop for Photographers: Beyond the Basics

Camera Calibration and Post Crop Vignette

Adobe Photoshop for Photographers: Beyond the Basics

Lesson 36 of 37

Camera Calibration and Post Crop Vignette

Lesson Info

Camera Calibration and Post Crop Vignette

We're going to look at some start to finish examples were all show the end result, then I'll open the file and show you how kind of how that was put together sometimes I'll actually do whatever it was was needed to create it. Other times I'll just show you by turning a layer on or off to describe things in the process. I'll try to throw in some tips that you might not already know of with these features and that if we have a little bit extra time in there before we do, I need to end. We will open it up for some extra questions on just some extra little techniques. So let's, take a look any time I start an image, it always starts out in camera or you can replace cameron was something else known as adobe light room and that's. What I usually do is I use light room to do the initial processing of my images. All of the sliders they have available in light room are identical to those found in adobe cameron since this class's photo shopped for photographers. I know everyone here owns photosh...

opped and camera. Out comes a photo shop so that's, why we've been demonstrated in there, but if he on light room, you do these things there. All right, now here is an image and I just want to show you our feature we didn't have a chance to talk about and give you a little uh lewis to how to think about things uh, what I'm going to do here is on the right side of my screen. We have our adjustments in one adjustment we didn't get a chance to talk about was under the fx tab. In fact, I don't even think we've ever been to the fx town well, there's one thing I do quite commonly under the fx tab in that is there's an area called post crop vignette ing and I find that I like people to stay away from the edges of my pictures staying here the middle of it because if this picture was hanging on the wall next to somebody else's and they get to the edge of the shot, they might just suddenly want to go to see the next one on the wall. I want to keep him in here as long as I can and this is one thing that I do it to a tremendous number of my images, but there are some settings in here in some tricks about using it that you might not be aware of because it's not necessarily obvious so first let's just see what is post cropped and getting do well there's two kinds of vignette ing in came a wrong. The first one is designed to compensate for problems that your lens introduced, where the lens that you were using didn't deliver enough light to the edges of the picture. And so the edges are a little bit darker than the middle most of the time. That's fixed under the tab that is thie lens corrections tab. When I was under there, there was this thing called profile, and if I turn this on, it would end up trying to compensate for any curvature introduced into the image due to the lens. And if the corner's got darkened, clicking right there, it would try to fix them. Well, oftentimes I don't wanted to fix the fact that the corners were a little bit darker than the middle, because I like having the middle of my frame nice and bright in the corners, getting dimmer and dimmer so the people it's attention stays longer in the middle. So if I turn this off, you can see the distortion that it corrected and it also brighten the image a little bit in the corners. I can see it in the upper right. Well, if you don't want it to brighton in the corners, go down below that and there's a choice called vignette ing. And you're saying how much of the vignette ing correction do you actually want to use? And often times I turn it all the way down to say, I don't want it to correct for that? I do want to correct for curvature in the image, but I don't want it to fix the vignette ing unless they've been yelling was obvious and distracting, then I'd get rid of it, then I'm going to go over to the fx tab before I actually go there. I should mention the problem with this than yet ing you're actually fine two areas with it right here and also under I believe, the manual tablet see if it's there? Yep lens vignette ing you could use this to darken or to brighten the corners of your image in mid point would control. How far does that encroach in towards the middle of your picture? The problem is all of the features underneath the lens corrections tab apply thinking about the original cropping of your picture, how it was cropped in camera, I was framed, I should say, and if you ever crop your picture, it still is doing it out where the original framing that the camera had, uh, did it it doesn't think about any cropping that you've applied here, if, on the other hand, I go to the fx tab this is called post crop vignette ing, which means it doesn't think about the original in camera framing it thinks about you're after version after you've cropped the image and you have much more control over how you accomplish this so the amount slider here I can use it to either brighten the edges or darken the edges and it does it much wider range of settings than the other one we saw a minute ago then we have some settings below that but often times it's hard to figure out exactly what you need with ease because they've been getting you apply usually you want to be subtle, not overly obvious here's how to make it a little easier midpoint controls how far vignette ing goes in towards the middle of your picture if I move it right now it's really hard to see any difference when I'm adjusting it here's the trick if you hold on the option key if you hold down the option key when you move it it's going to be much more dramatic because it's gonna act as if the amount slider was turned all the way down meaning that you were darkening the edges as much as possible and it's only doing that for the length of time that I'm moving this slider once I figure out where I wanted and I let go it brings the amount back to where you actually have it set too then we have a choice called roundness in with that trying to change it here it's hard to tell exactly what it's doing, but if I hold down the option key, it again acts as if the amount is turned all the way down to darken as much as possible and now when I move it it's a little bit easier to see on this image is still a little hard to see, but the same is true for all of these sliders. You can hold down the option key and it will be more pronounced to make it easier. See exactly what it's doing then at the top above that there's a pop up menu the default setting, his highlight priority and I don't like the default setting for most images if you have any areas that are colorful on the edge of your image, if this is center highlight priority and you bring down your amount too dark and things the colors will shift as it darkens and you won't really like it. If you don't want the colors to change and look like they don't belong in your image, then you're going to need to change this to color priority then it'll make sure that the colors don't shift in unusual ways there's a third choice which is mainly a legacy choice it's called paint overlay and that's going to just put black over your image and it's not doing anything special, that's the way old versions of photo shop would work like a couple of years ago, and if he just needed to reproduce the exact same look that the older, less sophisticated versions would have, you'd use that. So for most things I use color priority, and the only time I use highlight priority is if there's a highlight near the edge of my frame. For instance, do you see a little light on the left edge of this image here? Well, if I darken the edge of the frame enough and I get it to encroach enough in there that little light there will end up being dark and a bit, and it can look unnatural if I change the menu to highlight priority watch what happens to that light over there on the side or the area below it? Where it's also bright, you might notice a change a little bit. Usually the highlights will look a bit better, then you have a highlight slider down here, and you can say, how much should my highlights be able to break through the vignette? Ng so they don't get darkened because if they get dark and it looks artificial so I could bring that up and say, let those bright highlights breakthrough and don't let the vignette in dark in them. But I only do that if they're bright highlights on the edge of the frame that I'm concerned about in this particular case, I just retouch out that little bright thing, so that was one thing that was needed on that it's just darken the edges, let's, take a look at a few other things in camera wrong that we didn't get a chance to talk about that air used on a lot of these images. So with this particular image, uh, one of the settings that I believe I used is another one we haven't talked about, and it is underneath this little tab here called camera calibration with camera calibration, you have a bunch of sliders that not too many people ever play with, but you don't have to play with all that many sliders here, you just mainly need look at one particular poppet menu, which controls how the colors air rendered in your picture. If after you're done adjusting the main sliders and camera raw, you just find that overall you don't like some of the colors, then you could come in here and click on this menu. The default setting is called adobe standard if how you hadn't changed it originally, with this image that's where it will still be, and if I switched between these, I could go to camera, fateful fact, actually, let me go to a different picture. I have one here that's got I think you'll know you'll notice a more pronounced difference. There's lots of bright colors. Okay here. So if I go to standard, this is what it looked like with standard rendering. And so I didn't quite like the way the colors were trying out in this, regardless of where I moved the sliders underneath the basic tab, the reds in the image in the yellows and the flames just weren't quite doing it for me. So I went over to the camera calibration tab. I went to this area called camera profile clicked, and I just tried the first choice, and if I thought it looked better, I left it at that if I didn't think so, I typed command z for undue then I tried the next choice who there we go, and if I thought it looked better, I left her that that without typing command z but I did try the next one to see if it's any better. No, next one e I don't know, I don't want I might like that red could sit really much more saturated it's hard to say there between those two, then I can go through and try the next and so on but that's something I will frequently change anytime I'm trying to adjust my image I have some vivid colors in it and it ends up looking not exactly the way alike I'm just that's another influence in how the image is processed when I'm done with that I'll usually find tune the image a little bit more but any time I'm not liking the overall way colors are rendered I could head into camera profile to adjust it now we talked about hdr and I just want to let you know that I'm doing fewer and fewer true hdr images these days I find that the newer cameras are much better at capturing detail in the shadows without getting too much noise and some of the newer cameras actually end up capturing a wider brightness range than some of the older ones. For instance, the nikon d eight hundred uh seems to capture ah bit extra also I'm going to be switching cameras most likely soon currently shoot cannon but I'm going to switch I think to sony I can use an adapter to use my current lenses that he's he's still uh and it also captures a slightly wider range and with that even with my current cannon I find that very frequently I can get away without doing hdr even in midday son so this is one example let me show you what this looks like a default settings I'll go to the upper right side menu here, choose camera default. So do you see that brightness range get extremely dark shadows in there? Really bright highlights midday sun that's usually when hdr would be necessary, but know that if you got an image and you look up here at the history graham when you get it open, if there's not a massive spike on the right to indicate you have a lot of solid white and there's, not a massive spike in the left to show you have a lot of solid black, then even though the image might look like it has ah, look that you don't like. Oftentimes I can process it right here on camera with a single capture and here's what I do, I take the highlights and move it all the way down. I take the shadows and I move it all the way up. Then I adjust the exposure to control over all brightness, and if I need a little bit of extra tweaking, then adjust the contrast in clarity on this case haven't go out the teeniest bit darker there we go and after this, if you need any further adjustment, you really wish you could go in there and adjust your highlights and shadows even more, then go to the curves tab if I click on the curves tab. You have another set of highlight and shadow sliders, so if you need a little bit extra shattered detail, you could bring that up or if you need it to be a little bit darker, you could bring it down. So little fine tuning with this also can help on occasion, so I find that on occasion or actually more often than you'd expect, uh, I end up going out shooting midday sun and I might still capture and hdr capture meaning click, click, click or it ends up doing the auto bracketing, but in the end I might only process one of those pictures, uh, and process it in a way similar to what I just showed you. The main thing is, if the shadow detail is the most important part of the image, then I'll probably still do hdr because it could be a bit noisy if I really pull out a tremendous amount of shadow detail, then I have a confession to make in that is I've been out of the country for two months, and during the time I was out of the country, adobe came out with a new version of camera, mainly to squash bugs into support a few extra cameras, but any time they do that, sometimes they make tiny changes to things and photo shop we're in light room or in camera and in this case they made one and camera that messed me up a little bit and I'm still trying to get used to it haven't had the time to really sort out exactly what you did, but I want to show it to you in general just so you know what they've changed and then you can experiment with it as well in camera there used to be a preview check box right here in that preview check box if I turned it off would showing what it would look like if I never applied the sliders that were under the tab I'm currently working on and that's gone now and I miss it I wish it was right there, but they replaced it with these three little icons and I'm still getting used to those three little icon, so I won't be able to tell you absolutely every little thing about them, but I want to make sure you know they're there and know a few things about them with these icons, we can make a change to our image let's say I do something dramatic just so it's obvious I'm going to convert this image to black and white if I've made a change to my image since I've opened it, then if I hold press and hold the peaky um a keyboard I'll see the previous view if I let go and type it one more time I can get back to my end results so p is going toggle the preview of the changes I've made since I've opened the inn mission down here at the bottom, you'll find this little why symbol in if I tap on that you can show me before and after side by side, if I tap on it a second time it's going to show it split halfway down the middle again, it'll show it above and below in and split the other way. Tap it one more time and it shows the whole image if you don't feel like sitting there and click in six times to get to the setting you want, you can also click and hold to simply uh, choose between them instead of having to click to get to each one. There's also a new preference called preview preferences and if you only seem to use one of those choices and that's your preference, you always like it divided halfway down or something like that here you can control which one of those modes are available on the other setting center in here. Like if you want the labels horses before and after that kind of thing, I think of you chose divider and split view, you might be able to drag the little divider left and right to say how much of the events would you like to see so let's, get into that little a split view. Then there is. There are two other, uh, choices. I can click on the swap before and after, which is thie middle icon. And right now the left side of it before the right side is the after when I hit swap, they just switched. And if I go into something else here, if I continue to change my image now, you see the after you sitting over here on the right before is there, I could cut that again and swap it back over just changing which side it's thinking of and I'll make further changes to the image and you notice that the side on the right side it is what I'm actually changing. You see that? So I can really have kind of two different sets of setting, some trying to work with. And if I decide that when I like what's on the right side, I could take this little left point arrow that's here, and that should push it over to the left side to say, make that the before and then I can continue experimenting. I can come in here and maybe I want to change my white balance. You're doing other things, but it's always going to fact, the one that's on the right side. If I really like it and I'm going to continue to experiment all again, hit that left, pointy, narrow, it'll push it over to the left side, so that now it's over here, and I can continue to experiment. And then, if I want teo, turn it off, I can cycle through these again, or just go into the menu to choose it. So they've changed the way the previews work. Instead of having the preview track box, we now have those three icons. I'm not completely used to him yet, so I'm still kind of working through them. But I want to make sure you're aware that they were there and they were introduced in camera version eight point four. So if you don't see them on your version of camerata, you haven't updated yours to the newest version. That in that new version, just came out a short time ago. It came out while I was traveling.

Class Description

Ready to take your Adobe® Photoshop® skills to the next level? Join Photoshop expert Ben Willmore for a three-day introduction to the techniques that separate the novices from the pros.

Ben will take the guesswork out of using the more advanced tools, techniques, and menus of Adob® Photoshop. You’ll learn about which Adobe Photoshop tools are essential, and which you can ignore altogether. You’ll also learn about compositing, texturing, and retouching skills, like removing shine from foreheads in portraits and seamlessly joining images together. Ben will also cover hidden and hard-to-find features and shortcuts that will help you produce higher-quality work in a fraction of the time.

By the end of this course, you’ll have professional-level Adobe® Photoshop® skills that will set your work apart from the competition.

Olga

The best investment I've made to improve my PS skills. Mr. Willmore is a skillful lecturer. English is my second language and I appreciate the clarity of his voice and the fact that he repeats several times what he's doing or what he did. It is great for note taking as well as for practicing. Just an Excellent workshop! Thanks Mr. Willmore!

a Creativelive Student

I absolutely love Ben Willmore's teaching style. He is clear and thorough. This class has a wealth of good info so I had to purchase this course. Thanks Ben and Creative Live!!!
PS, Don't forget to forward the PDF. I am waiting patiently.

a Creativelive Student

AB FAB- Ben is an excellent teacher. He is very through and &quot;down to earth&quot; in his explanations. All his courses are worth the time and the money to view and purchase them!!! Please keep on teaching on CreativeLive. Thanks, Thanks, and more Thanks. Janet Bozgan 4-24-14